Stopover in a Quiet Town
|Teleplay = Earl Hamner, Jr. |Story = Rod Serling |Director = Ron Winston |Music = Stock |Guest Stars = Barry Nelson, Nancy Malone |Lead Character = Bob and Millie Frazier |Previous Episode = The Jeopardy Room |Next Episode = The Encounter }} "Stopover in a Quiet Town" is an episode of the The Twilight Zone. Episode Details Opening Narration "Bob and Millie Frazier, average young New Yorkers who attended a party in the country last night and on the way home took a detour. Most of us on waking in the morning know exactly where we are; the rooster or the alarm clock brings us out of sleep into the familiar sights, sounds, aromas of home and the comfort of a routine day ahead. Not so with our young friends. This will be a day like none they've ever spent - and they'll spend it in the Twilight Zone." Episode Summary A married couple, Bob and Millie Frazier, wake up in an unfamiliar house. They remember only that they both drank too much at a party the night before, and that on the way home, a large shadow had appeared over their car. They soon discover that the house is mostly props — the telephone has no connection, the cabinetry is merely glued-on facing, the refrigerator is filled with plastic food. They hear a girl's laughter and go outside to find the child. However, once outside, they discover that the town is deserted. They find a stuffed squirrel in a fake tree, search for help in a vacant church, and ring the bell in the church's bell tower hoping someone will come to their aid. When no one comes to help them, the increasingly desperate couple discovers even the trees are fake and the grass is papier-mâché. The exasperated Millie begins to think that perhaps she crashed their car on the way home, and they are now in Hell. They hear a train whistle and, thinking they have finally found a way out of the town, rush to the train station and board the empty train. As the train leaves the station (revealed to be in "Centerville"), they begin a light-hearted conversation, vastly relieved. However, when the train soon comes to a stop again in Centerville, they realize it has only gone in a circle, and they are back where they started. They leave the train and return to the center of town, once again hearing a little girl's laughter, and now pursued by a shadow. The shadow is cast by the hand of a little girl--a little girl giant. As she reaches down and picks them up, laughing with pleasure, the man and woman are like ants in the midst of her chubby palm. The couple have been abducted to a planet inhabited by beings many times the size of humans, and the shadow that was cast over them before the story began, as the audience deduces from the girl's mother's chiding, was that of the little girl's father, who brought them home to her from Earth as "pets" for his daughter's dollhouse neighborhood. At her mother's bidding, the little girl drops them back into the town, which is seen to be similar to a mock-up model railway town with a rail line travelling in a circle around it. As the terrified couple stumblingly resume their running, Rod Serling, in voiceover, sardonically reminds the viewer not to drink and drive. Closing Narration "The moral of what you've just seen is clear. If you drink, don't drive. And if your wife has had a couple, she shouldn't drive either. You might both just wake up with a whale of a headache in a deserted village in the Twilight Zone." Production Companies *Cayuga Productions *Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) (in association with) Distributors *Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) (1959) (USA) (TV) (original airing) Memorable Quotes Trivia *It's possible that this episode shares the same universe as The Little People. External Links *http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734625/